PONYO (2008, Blu-ray released March 2, 2010 – MSRP $39.99)

Stunning. Absolutely stunning. Yeah, I’m a a bit of an unabashed Miyazaki fan but the Blu-ray disc of his latest film, Ponyo has completely blown me away! I didn’t think 2-D, hand-drawn animation could look this good in my home!!

If you follow The Blu-ray Blog at all, I’m sure you’ve gathered that I’ve been waiting ages to get my hands on this disc. I’ve been following Ponyo (Gake no Ue no Ponyo, literally “Ponyo on the Cliff“) since before it was released in Japanese theatres in July of 2008 (writing about it for FPS Magazine too!) I’ve posted articles on the Japanese Blu-ray release, the North American disc and even a now-dated rundown of Studio Ghibli on Blu-ray. To say I’m excited to finally have Ponyo in my Blu-ray disc player is a bit of an understatement. And I’ve got to tell you, for the most part, I’m not let down by this release. Let me start with the good stuff.

The film itself is pure genius. As is everything creator Hayao Miyazaki touches. It’s very possible that I can’t be impartial here, as I’m such a fan of his work but Ponyo is wonderful, understated family entertainment that’s damn near perfect in every way. It’s essentially the familiar story of Hans Christian Andersen‘s The Little Mermaid, given that special Ghibli touch that turns a simple fairy tale into anime magic. It’s crafted to appeal to very small children but loaded with adult themes (the environment is always concern in Miyazaki’s work) and touches that hearken back to the director’s previous works. Much like My Neighbour Totoro and Kiki’s Delivery Service before it, Ponyo leaves you with an enchanted, magical feeling, like you’ve just seen the world through the fresh eyes of a child – a flavour of film making that, in my experience, only Miyazaki seems fully capable of harnessing.

Like I said off the top, Ponyo is absolutely stunning on Blu-ray. I would go so far as to say perfect. Yeah. Ponyo looks perfect! I’ve never seen anything look this slick in HD. I can’t find a fault! The audio, on the other had, is an issue for me. While the DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 English dub does sound spectacular, nearly matching the quality of the video encode, what irks me is the fact that the original language track (Japanese) is relegated to a mere, lossy Dolby Digital 5.1 track! Luckily, it’s pretty decent DD but it doesn’t really hold a candle to the lossless DTS-HD. Sigh… One of these days, Disney, you’re going to see the light and understand that the people who buy these films on Blu-ray are the people who care about film and the quality of the presentation of the original material!

The discs special features are actually a lot better than I was anticipating. And they’re all in HD! I was expecting typical Disney-style kids-fluff here. And there is some of that, to be sure (the clumsy, interactive The World of Ghibli – Enter the Lands, which I’ll be happy to never endlessly click-through again!) but what surprised me is the amount of content that actually features Miyazaki discussing his work! The World of Ghibli – Behind the Studio is a series of short pieces that, when viewed in succession, run almost 45-minutes and feature a ton of behind-the-scenes footage of Studio Ghibli and Miyazaki himself, intercut with a lot of film and interview footage, some of which has been culled from the 12-hour long Ponyo Was Produced Like This – Hayao Miyazaki’s Thinking Process Blu-ray (a Japanese release without English dubbing or subtitles.) There is also a Ponyo-related 1080i, English subtitled sequence from The Scenery In Ghibli : Japan in Miyazaki’s Work / European Journey To Meet Miyazaki’s Work Blu-ray, which is an incredible addition to this US/Canadian disc.

If you’re a Miyazaki fan, as I am, and love to look at his artwork, even when it’s not moving, you’ll really enjoy the excellent picture-in-picture track on the Ponyo disc as it allows you to view all of the master’s hand-drawn storyboards as the film plays in the background! Amazing! Almost as good as a commentary track in this case. The Ponyo Blu-ray disc is rounded out with an introduction to the film by its American producers Frank Marshall and Kathleen Kennedy, previews of other Ghibli discs (sadly, all only available on DVD), trailers and BD-Live.

For a look at all the special features on the Japanese edition of the Ponyo Blu-ray read our previous article here: Studio Ghibli/Disney Ponyo Japanese Blu-ray Bonus Features, Release Date Confirmed

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THE HOUSE OF THE DEVIL (2008, Blu-ray released February 2, 2010 – MSRP $34.98)

It’s rare to see a modern film that so completely encompasses everything wonderful about a genre and style of another era without feeling like a send up or flimsy copy. The House of the Devil is that rare cinematic indulgence that manages to be a perfect tribute to the horror films of the early 80s while maintaining a sense of sincerity and originality. I loved it!

While watching The House of the Devil on Blu-ray, I couldn’t help but think that this is the film that Mark Borchardt was desperately trying to bring to the screen in American Movie – a well paced 80s throwback, nail-biter of a satanic-cult flik! It’s got everything he dreamed of packing into his cult-film – evil, robed satanists, pentagrams, sacrifices, buckets of blood. But unlike Borchardt’s clumsy, amateur efforts, it’s clear right from the start that the audience is in skilled hands here. Writer/director Ti West plays the film straight, setting a very believable tone early on and doesn’t give in to genre expectations until surprisingly late in the narrative. And by that time, those horror conventions actually come as a shock, even though we’ve been expecting them since the first frame. The House of the Devil may have the veneer of a cheap 80s throwback but look beyond the vintage music and high-waisted slacks and you’ll find that it transcends its predecessors in almost every way.

This film was shot dirty and cheap on Super 16mm so don’t be disturbed by all the grain you see up there on the screen. The Blu-ray edition of the film is rock solid and very accurate to the source material. Yeah, there’s a lot of grain but there’s also a good amount of detail and accurate colours in this attractive encode. The DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track is, again, quite faithful to the modest source and as such isn’t going to blow your doors off.

The House of the Devil comes with a host of decent special features, best of which are the two commentaries, both featuring West. The first is a more reserved but pleasant chat with star Jocelin Donahue while the second, featuring sound designer Graham Resnik, and producers Larry Fessenden and Peter Phok is akin to listening in on a chilled-out nerd party. Really fun stuff! The Blu-ray is rounded out with a couple of featurettes, deleted scenes and some trailers.

The House of the Devil is also available in a limited edition VHS and DVD bundle, for those of you who really want to have the complete 1980s horror film experience!

I’m not the biggest fan of Evangelion. More of a Macross and Miyazaki guy, myself. But that doesn’t temper my enthusiasm for the upcoming Blu-ray edition of Evangelion: 1.11 You Are (Not) Alone. There are some reviews of the disc kicking around the net already and from all indications, this thing looks and sounds brilliant! We can all see for ourselves soon enough as this first entry in the series hits the streets in a couple of weeks, on March 9th.

Also on The Blu-ray Blog: Neon Genesis Evangelion 1.11: You Are (Not) Alone Blu-ray Disc Review

I bought a new TV last week. My Sanyo projector has been my only HDTV display for the last few years but seeing as how it’s difficult to enjoy/review Blu-ray films on it during the day (it’s in the living room!) and I’ve got a lot more titles to cover these days, I thought I’d step up my game with a nice, modest, LCD display. I chose the Samsung LN40B750. And so far, it’s kicking my ass!

I had to go fairly small. Around 40″ seemed ideal. The living room isn’t very big and the far wall is taken up by a window during the day and a projector screen at night so the the new HDTV would have to live on a wall a very short distance from our viewing area. Besides, if I need to see anything larger than 40″ I’ve got the 110″ of the projector screen so getting the biggest screen wasn’t an issue. It then became a question of brand. Seeing my sister’s Samsung LN46B610 solved that dilemma for me. When I showed up for a few days over the holidays I brought a big bag of Blu with me for my family to enjoy. My nephew immediately fired up G.I.Joe: The Rise of Cobra on the LN46B610 and I was blown away. So, there it was. I was all set to buy an LN40B610 when my old arch nemesis Future Shop decided to make me a deal I couldn’t refuse. And now I’m the proud owner of a Samsung LN40B750. And it is truly gorgeous!

The Future Shop delivery men showed up a few days ago and hauled my new TV into the house, carrying it with only one arm. That should give you an idea of how light this thing is. My girlfriend and I had it out of the box and on its stand in no time flat. A little HDMI from the old PS3 and we were in business! No setup required. Gorgeous picture right out the box. Before we set to watching a film, I shot on over to CNET to scoop their calibration settings for the LN40B750. They seem right on the money to me. I might tweak them sometime in the near future but these seem like a great place to start.

So, the picture is great. The sound is thin but no more so than you would expect from down-firing speakers on a screen like this. It’s certainly good enough to watch TV. And for anything more, I’ll use my audio setup. It’s got networking features that I had up and running quickly by yanking an ethernet cable over from the modem and plugging straight into the back of the panel. No calibration necessary here! We’ve got a bunch of Yahoo widgets to play with and the ability to stream content from our MacBook Pros straight to the TV (great in theory but I haven’t gotten it to work properly yet). The streaming, however, isn’t a big deal for us as we’ve taken to just putting TV shows we like onto a USB stick and plugging it into one of the two available slots on the side of the TV. So far, it’s been able to play every format we’ve thrown at it. No more need to fire up that PS3 to watch AVI files!

After these first few days with the LN40B750, I have to say I’m quite pleased. I most likely won’t be returning it to the shop, even though I have 30 days, no questions asked, to send it back whence it came. I’ll give it a few more weeks and write up a more thorough review.

One last note – this was a pricey set last year. But seeing as how Samsung’s 2010 models are about to hit the streets any day now you should be able to find the LN40B750 at a fair discount soon. Keep your eyes peeled!

Amazon: $1166.98

Kubrick! Douglas! Gladiatorial action!! Spartacus has got it all. And now, thanks to Universal, we’re about to get it all on Blu-ray. Spartacus will hit shops on May 25th in a new 50th Anniversary edition that should best its HD-DVD counterpart in every way. Sadly, as nice as this edition looks, it’s still not going to beat out the previously available Criterion DVD, which features a commentary track by producer-actor Kirk Douglas, actor Peter Ustinov, novelist Howard Fast, producer Edward Lewis, restoration expert Robert A. Harris, and designer Saul Bass among a lot of other great stuff not to be found on the Blu-ray. I mean, I’m sure it’s going to look and sound better than ever but I’m going to want to hold onto my DVD for all those great extras. And the much cooler cover art!

SPARTACUS: 50TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION
(May 25, 2010 – MSRP $26.98)
Video: 2.35:1 1080p
Audio: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1

Special Features:

• Deleted Scenes
• Interview with Peter Ustinov
• Interview with Jean Simmons
• Behind-the-Scenes Footage
• Vintage Newsreels
• Theatrical Trailer
• Production Stills
• Concept Art
• Costume Designs
• Saul Bass Storyboards
• Posters & Print Ads
• My Scenes
• BD Live